


Agatha Heterodyne and the Betrayal of Gasicorn

by Sturzkampf



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 11:36:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3172760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sturzkampf/pseuds/Sturzkampf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Once she was finally recognised as the Heterodyne of Mechanicsburg and safely established in the Castle, Agatha strived to continue the heroic good works of her father and uncle, usually with great success. However her broken promise to protect the peaceful community of Gasicorn has often been cited by her detractors as a stain on her record. Here, finally, is the true story of Agatha Heterodyne and the Betrayal of Gasicorn.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Agatha Heterodyne and the Betrayal of Gasicorn

Nobody wanted to tell Agatha Heterodyne the Bad News. The Jägers could still remember the old Masters and even though the current Heterodyne had yet to actually physically disembowel a messenger, they could still see enough in her to remind them of the good old days. The minions of Castle Heterodyne all avoided any eye contact when the subject was raised; it was definitely a job for someone else. The Castle itself was highly tempted; normally it rather enjoyed anything that made people distressed and upset, but it had learned from experience not to distress and upset someone with access to and understanding of the inner workings of its mind. Moloch von Zinzer could see the job coming his way with the depressing inevitability of a fight in Mama Gkika’s basement bar and had taken the sensible of precaution of hiding in the special double-secret cupboard he had constructed, where the ‘eyes ‘ and ‘ears’ of Castle Heterodyne had been carefully deactivated.

At first everyone agreed that it would be very, very unwise to allow Lord Parrot, the shrill and indignant Emissary from the Gasicorn Community, anywhere near Lady Heterodyne until his Bad News had been broken to her gently and she had had a chance to accept it in a rational, philosophical frame of mind and the staff had had the chance to clear up the broken glass and repair the overturned furniture. Lord Parrot made it plain to everyone from the Jägerkin Generals to the newest scullery maid that he regarded this continued refusal to grant him an audience and address his complaints as further evidence of bad faith. In the end he succeeded in making himself so obnoxious to everyone that they decided they didn't really care if his brain ended up pickled in a glass jar after all and gave him the meeting with Agatha Heterodyne that he demanded.

Lord Parrot was a clean-shaven man in his middle years, who compensated for his relative lack of height with a ramrod straight back, dyed black hair and a frank and unwavering gaze. He walked through life with the confidence of a man wearing perfect armour. Not the burnished metal of a battle clank or the force fields of a Spark, but the impenetrable confidence and assuredness of the Morally Superior Person. He was escorted to the audience arranged for him in the Mourning Room by three Jägerkin, apparently selected for their violently clashing colours, who introduced themselves as Dimo, Maxim and Ognian. As they walked through the corridors of Castle Heterodyne the Emissary was still complaining:

“Despite the grave injustices done to us by the House of Heterodyne, we of the Community of Gasicorn are a peace-loving people living at one with nature and dedicated to non-violence.” he told the Jägers. “An armed guard is completely unnecessary. Despite her broken promises I pose no threat to Lady Heterodyne.”

Maxim gave him an alarming pointed-tooth grin and slapped him on the back. “Dun vorry Schveethot. Ve vill only schtep in iv de Mistress gets really violent.”

Parrot drew himself up to his full 5 foot 7 inches. “I am An Emissary Under Internationally Recognised Treaties and I do not need protection.” he exclaimed pompously.

“Dot iz goot becawse ve iz not here to protect hyu” Ognian told him happily. “Ve iz here to hold your arms behind hyur back vhile de Mistress beats hyu vit a schpanner.”

“Hy hates it ven she does dot” mused Dimo, sadly.

“I should hope so!” exclaimed Parrot with shocked indignation.

“Ja, dot iz no vay to treat goot tools. She is alvays spoilink dem. Ve gots to get her a proper spiky mace or summtink from de armoury vor ven she vants to be hittink pipple.”

They walked the rest of the way to the Mourning Room in uneasy silence. The three grinning escorts pointedly did not help Lord Parrot with the doors as he struggled to open them, well aware that the Castle's mechanism was pushing back. Agatha was waiting for them inside, still wiping her hands on a rag. Dimo was encouraged. If the Mistress had just come from the laboratory then she was likely to still be very near the madness place; the interview promised to be most entertaining. To his disappointment she actually seemed worried and concerned.

“Lord Parrot, whatever is wrong? I am told that you bring tragic and distressing news.”

The Emissary launched into his long-rehearsed speech of indignation.

“Lady Heterodyne, I am here to inform you that the Community of Gasicorn has been destroyed, despite your promises and assurances. The entire Community has been completely over-run by the forces of the Polar Ice Lords, its sylvan vistas despoiled, its crops destroyed, its magnificent works of art vandalised, its people murdered or enslaved.”

For a moment Agatha was struck speechless. She had consulted with the Community at great length little more than a year before to defend the gentle people and their beautiful country from the threat massing along their Northern Borders. Surely she had left them safe? How had she failed them?

“But... but I don't understand. How could the invaders have even reached your borders? The machine-can _n_ on towers that I designed for you should have been able to destroy any approaching army. From their positions on top of the ridge overlooking the ice plain they had a clear sweep of at least two miles”.

The emissary scowled. “Please, there was no way we could have installed them”. Agatha was horrified

“Surely there were no mechanical problems? I checked my calculations most thoroughly.”

“No, but they would have spoiled the view. That range of hills is one of the jewels of Gasicorn, an unspoiled paradise and an area of outstanding natural beauty. We couldn't ruin such a wonderful place by erecting those horrible iron monstrosities where they would be visible for miles around.”

“Oh. I see. Well, surely the population were able to escape down the new roads that I designed?”

“Don't be naïve. Everyone knows that building new roads only increases the amount of traffic and encourages needless journeys, not to mention the additional pollution caused by all the extra traffic. There was a start made to the roads, but it was soon stopped by protesters chaining themselves to the trees in the ancient woodland that you demanded be chopped down to make your horrible scar on the landscape.”

“But the forest has an area of 100 square miles. There was no way the road could go all the way round. And it only needed a strip 200 yards wide cut through the trees. 99% of the forest would have been completely unaffected!”

“You Sparks! You just destroy the environment without any thought for the consequences or our children's future!”

“Right, so at least you were able to bring the reinforcements up to the front quickly on the new railways?”

“There wasn't enough time to build them.”

“Not enough time?! You had an entire year!”

“Hardly enough time for the public enquiry, let alone all the legal objections from the home owners whose houses lay along the route. Do you realise how much the value of their properties would decrease if a railway passed within a quarter of a mile of their back garden? There were at least five alternative routes proposed that were still under discussion when the Ice Lords attacked.”

“OK, so tell me you did at least build the electric wheels? They alone should have been enough to deter any invader. You didn't build them, did you?”

“No, of course not.”

“Why not?! All you had to do was drain the marsh. It isn't pretty, no-one lives there, there aren't even any trees! It's just a mosquito-infested wasteland.”

“Newts.”

“What?”

“The marsh was the primary habitat for the Great Crested Newt. It's a protected species. You can't just go round destroying a unique environment like that.”

Agatha blinked. Used to dealing with Sparks, and a strong Spark herself, she was accustomed on a daily basis to conversations that did not always follow a completely rational train of thought. However as the discussion progressed she was getting an increasingly disorienting feeling of slipping into some bizarre parallel world.

“And the aetheric trebuchets? They should have done serious damage to the invaders. Tell me you built those. It was an old industrial site. No people, no animals, just broken asphalt and polluted ground.”

“Stalk balls.”

“I beg your pardon?!”

“The local wildlife trust discovered the winter stalk ball growing there. It's a little fungus, about 2 cm high. It only appears in December. Very rare. It only grows on moss and then only in a high salt environment and the old brown field site just happened to be the perfect conditions. Of course, digging up the site would be completely unthinkable.”

“Couldn't you just, well, move the stalk balls?”

“Oh please don't bring up that tired old 'translocation' argument. That's just an excuse building contractors use to get around the planning regulations and add costs for unnecessary work.”

“So you didn't actually install any of the defences that I built for you?”

“No of course not. I just explained that were all completely environmentally unacceptable.”

“And what happened?”

Lord Parrot drew himself up to his full height and launched himself into his big finale with a dramatic flourish.

“The Ice Lords descended upon the Community of Gasicorn. The beautiful hills have been gnawed and broken by the Doom Wyrms. The elegant houses of the valleys cracked and collapsed beneath the weight of the advancing assault glaciers. The ancient woodland was uprooted and flattened by the great blizzards spun by the terrible manitou, the Daughter of Winter. The marshes have been frozen solid and nothing is left alive. Even the old industrial zone was deluged with a whirlwind of sharpened ice shards and everything smashed to rubble. Everywhere the frost constructs are destroying and killing the innocent without mercy or reason. When we explained that we were no threat to them, that we only wanted to live in peace with our neighbours and that we were ready to negotiate, they only became more violent.”

Agatha raised a sceptical eyebrow. “But you managed to escape.”

“When I saw that the situation was hopeless I knew that it was my duty to commandeer the fastest horse and come to Castle Heterodyne as swiftly as possible and make known to you the full magnitude of our despair!”

“So you abandoned your people and fled to the strongest fortress in Europa?”

“Do not try and lay the blame for this disaster on me. This is all your fault Agatha Heterodyne! You promised that you would save us, but the defences you gave us were useless! You took no account of sustainability or the environmental impact in their design! How could we build such monstrous machines to spoil our rural paradise? And as a result, despite all your promises, you left us defenceless. I am here to accuse you, you! of the responsibility for the destruction of the last unspoiled countryside in Europa!”

Agatha struggled to keep her exasperation under control. “But I gave you everything you needed! You could have defended yourself. Even building some of it would have been deterrent enough to keep the Ice Lords on their side of the border and you would never have even had to use them!”

Lord Parrot snorted in derision. “Only a technocrat or a fool would seek to make peace with his neighbours by building weapons. It just leads to a spiralling circle of mistrust and fear.”

“No, look, we went through all this when I visited!” explained Agatha, her voice starting to rise to match the righteous indignation of the Emissary. “These are the Polar Ice Lords! They are not attacking you because they are frightened of you, or because they feel threatened by you or even because they want something that you have! They are attacking you because they believe you don't have a right to exist! They will attack you just because they can. The fact that you want to live in peace is irrelevant to them!”

“So, if you want peace, arm for war? Pathetic! The cry of war-mongers and despoilers throughout the centuries!” The emissary took a step closer to Agatha and waved an unwise angry finger in her face. “I had thought you merely a naïve little girl but now I can see that you combine the despicable mindless destruction of the Heterodynes with the malicious evil of the Mongfish. Truly you are a product of your heritage. You should be ashamed, doing nothing while my people were dying! You make me sick!”

The three Jägers noticed the growing fury on Agatha's face and exchanged a look. By unspoken agreement they each took two steps away from the Emissary. They did not need the ominous rumblings of the Castle's mechanism that only their enhanced and experienced senses could detect to know that it would be wise to be well clear of the field of fire – or possibly sharp metal objects, falling masonry, spiky trapdoors, ghost-maker mice or any of the other amusing mechanisms the Castle had at its disposal.

“And another thing...omph!” shouted Parrot in Agatha's face, stopping in mid-sentence as a block of old red sandstone detached itself from a nearby pillar, shot horizontally across the room and caught him in the abdomen. With a sickly smile he slowly curled up on the floor and took no interest in the subsequent proceedings.

“I wanted to do that!” Agatha shouted at the ceiling.

“Well, please don't desist on my account, said the disembodied voice of the Castle. “I have plenty more blocks you can beat him with. Or I can just crush him for you” it suggested hopefully. “I like crushing people.”

Agatha looked down at the dribbling figure curled in a tight foetal ball of agony at her feet and sighed, her anger cooling. “No, just take him away. When he's recovered give him any supplies he needs and then escort him and his horse to the city gates and tell him to go away.”

“Why?”

“Well, it's too late for me to do anything to save Gasicorn and I don't want him in Mechanicsburg.”

The Castle spoke slowly and distinctly, as though explaining an obvious fact to a rather stupid minion. “No, I mean why are you just letting him go after he insulted you like that?”

“What's the point in hurting him?” Lost in a brown study, Agatha failed to notice the bafflement of both the Jägers and the Castle as they struggled to even comprehend this difficult philosophical question. Turning her back on the Emissary, she returned to her laboratory without another word, leaving the Jägers to carry him away. Unfortunately Lord Parrot sustained further injuries when he was accidentally dropped down three flights of stairs on his way to the Phosphorous Gate. How the Jägers managed this considering the Mourning Room is on the same level as the Phosphorous Gate was never satisfactorily explained.

Castle Heterodyne retains a clear and accurate picture of the Emissary from Gasicorn, in the memory bank labelled 'People to squash when Lady Heterodyne is not looking'.

Agatha's rational mind still tells her that the destruction of the Gasicorn Community was not her fault and that she did everything in her power to save it. But sometimes, in the small hours of the morning, she still hears the passionate and perfectly sincere accusations of Lord Parrot, the Morally Superior Person, and her conscience is stirred by undeserved guilt.

The last I heard Lord Parrot had been given a comfortable position by the Master of Paris, who wheels him out whenever anti-Heterodyne propaganda is needed. The Emissary of Gasicorn is always ready to tell anyone who will listen how the perfidious Agatha Heterodyne broke her promise and betrayed the beautiful and peaceful Gasicorn Community and left it at the mercy of the wild and bitter rage of the Polar Ice Lords.


End file.
